At the start of Gregg Hurwitz's Orphan X, first of a new series, 12-year-old Evan Smoak (not his real name) is recruited for a deep-black U.S. government program that trains orphans to be assassins. Cut to the present, in which an adult Evan is a lone operator in Los Angeles. He's called the Nowhere Man, someone with incredible resources and a specific set of skills to help people in desperate situations. After he erases someone's problem, his payment takes the form of the client finding another candidate for Evan to help, but only one.
Evan's Spidey sense screams when he receives two calls, each caller claiming to have been referred by his last client. Which one can Evan trust? The stakes are literally life or death, and not just for the callers. If Evan makes the wrong decision, the fake client could lead to his demise, for he's learned that someone knows about his past as Orphan X and wants to terminate him.
Once the exposition is out of the way, the story takes off, with enough action to grab the attention of actor Bradley Cooper and Warner Bros.; movie rights have been snapped up for Cooper to produce and possibly star. Hurwitz (Don't Look Back) balances the deadly goings-on with scenes that take place at the building where Evan lives, showing ordinary citizens nagging Evan about HOA meetings and asking him to babysit. The dichotomy reveals a man who knows how to survive, but perhaps has never been given the chance truly to live. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, blogger at Pop Culture Nerd